It’s official – there really is no excuse not to learn Irish as there are classes taking place in every corner of the city. Against the backdrop of North Belfast artist Catherine McWilliam’s Cnoic Bhéal Feirste exhibition in the Cultúrlann, Fóram na n Gael launched their booklet Cúrsaí on Irish classes in the greater Belfast […]

IT’S one of the fastest growing job sectors in an economy racked by recession, with demand for staff said to be “outstripping supply”, so it’s no wonder more people across South Belfast and beyond are undertaking the journey of learning Irish.

It was a night of firsts at this month’s meeting of Castlereagh Council.

It was the first time your reporter can remember being met with a smile by most councillors in the chamber, it was the first time he has seen a piece of correspondence on the agenda about the Irish language in the staunchly unionist borough and it was the first non-Christmas meeting on record as having finished quite early for a change.

Few analysts in language, politics and sociology would query Noam Chomsky’s view that ‘questions of language are always questions of power’. Therefore language is inextricably bound with politics. This connection becomes considerably marked in the context of colonialism, where the subjugation of native cultures is both a means and an end to colonial invasion. Therefore, language decline never occurs in communities of power and privilege, but rather among the dispossessed and disempowered.